"To whip me she put my head between the two fence rails and she taken
the cow hide whip and beat me until I couldn't sit down for a week.
Sometimes she tied our hands around a tree and tie our neck to the tree
with our face to the tree and they would get behind us with that cow
hide whip with a piece of lead tied to the end and lord have mercy!
child, I shouted when I wasn't happy. All I could say was, 'Oh pray,
mistress, pray.' That was our way to say Lord have mercy. The last
whipping old miss give me she tied me to a tree and oh my Lord! old miss
whipped me that day. That was the worse whipping I ever got in my life.
I cried and bucked and hollered until I couldn't. I give up for dead and
she wouldn't stop. I stop crying and said to her, 'Old miss, if I were
you and you were me I wouldn't beat you this way.' That struck old
miss's heart and she let me go and she did not have the heart to beat me
any more.
"I did every kind of work when I was a little slave; split rails,
sprouted, ditched, plowed, chopped, and picked and planted.
"I remember young master going to war and I remember hearing the first
gun shoot but I did not see it. I saw the smoke though.
"I never went to school a day in my life.
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